UK Police Arrest Man/Boy Suspected to be a Spokesman for LulzSec and Anonymous

Hacking the Hackers: Volume 3. Following recent intelligence-based raids in New York and London, UK officers from the Metropolitan Police Service’s Central e-Crime Unit arrested a 19-year-old man they believe to be “Topiary,” a spokesman for both LulzSec and Anonymous. The arrest took place at a residential address in the Shetland Islands and the suspect is being transported to a police station in central London during an ongoing search of the address. Of course, if its anything like the FBI raid at the McKibbon lofts, the suspect could just be some dude in a band guilty of not password-protecting his Wifi account.

Today’s arrest was related to investigation into ” network intrusions and Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks against a number of international business and intelligence agencies by what is believed to be the same hacking group,” according to the Metropolitan Police website. On July 21st, Topiary wiped his prolific Twitter stream except for one missive: “You cannot arrest an idea.”

Gawker’s Adrian Chen deep dives into everything we know about Topiary, a “skilled and reckless showman, happy to taunt and boast in his accent-tinted English then bask in the attention that resulted.” As Mr. Chen notes, “If it pans out, Topiary’s arrest is the biggest blow yet to LulzSec and Anonymous, showing even the most senior members are vulnerable.”

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